Saturday, 7 May 2016

Sonic the Hedgehog - May 2016

I guess if Grandma makes cakes for others, then she'd better make a darned good one for the main man! The Grandson!!!!

This one had to be my best so far. I went with the list of usual suspects for what he was into at the moment. Expecting Iron Man, Spiderman, Star Wars etc, but no! It was to be Sonic the Hedgehog. Oh eck!

Right, I had three weeks notice! Off to eBay to my trusty cake topper professional! Oh boy they did me proud! The topper, stars and boxes were to arrive the day before his birthday, but two days before the party. I had faith, so I ordered!

Now, the outside had to be white to show up the decorations, so I had to have the inside blue!

Food colour pastes it had to be, based on my previous experiences.

The problem was this ... Our margerine and butter here in the UK is more yellow than our US cousins have, what to do? A Facebook friend suggested Trex.

I'd read positive and negative reviews, but I had to have blue, using UK marge would have turned it green because of the yellow. You can find my recipie for Trex Butterless buttercream here

Because I was using Trex, it couldn't be your standard Victoria sponge mix, so I used a recipie from the Trex website for the sponge, see here .

It was hard to judge how much food colour paste I needed, but I gave it my best shot. I also wanted white butter cream. Same again with the Trex.

I'd read only bad reviews about butter icing, right down to "Ick, it's called butter cream for a reason"

Ok, it was up to me to try. Trex has no flavour, so I made sure I flavoured the sponge (vanilla) and thought of caramel for the butter cream. You don't need as much flavour so I'd advise to be sparing and taste check the mix as you go. You also need to ensure you use 20% less Trex to icing sugar recipie, I also added a little milk to soften it up.

It worked!

The texture was light, fluffy and perfect.

The flavours were amazing.

My experience of using Trex has been so positive, I'm going to use it again.

I have been asked many times, by those I do not know, how much I charge for my cakes and can I make them one? I'm afraid the answer will be 'No, I cannot make a cake for you.'Why is this? I only make cakes for friends and family. I apologise, in advance, if my refusal to make you a cake disappoints you, but this is not my job or a business, it's a hobby - I just like sharing my experiences with you in a blog and hope you get some inspiration from them. Thank you for your understanding.